


From Beneath A Burning Sun

by Jormandugr



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Canon Compliant, Gen, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-09 14:26:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1986387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jormandugr/pseuds/Jormandugr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are two sides to every fight, and the War of the Ring is no exception. While the Westerners fought and died on the fields at Pelennor, there were other men there too, bleeding and suffering. The Haradrim fought for their land, their history, and their honour, and they were betrayed. This is the untold story of the War of the Ring, seen from the losing side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fighting For Freedom

**Author's Note:**

> The first thing you should know before reading on is that almost every character in this fic is an OC. If you don't want to read about OCs, then this is probably not the fic for you, and now would be a good time to stop reading.  
> The second thing you should know is that this only half-involves the culture Tolkien described in such detail, as the Haradrim in this story lump together Northerners in much the same way as Northerners lump together the Haradrim in canon. Again, if you want to read about those cultures in particular, I would suggest you find another story.  
> The third, and final, thing to bear in mind is that this is an old fic. It dates back to 2009, and my writing's developed a lot since then. So, um... don't judge me, I guess?

"Get your feet moving, and your eyes forwards!" an officer's voice rings out from behind him, and he hears the whip crack, hears one of the soldiers scream as the lash comes down on some poor fool's back.

Not his, though. And for that, he is thankful.

It has been a long time to travel – a long time, and a long way, with light-shod feet blistering and callousing against the earth that is hard and intransient. He longs for the sands and the burning skies of the desert he has always called home. But they are long ago and far away, a memory and nothing else.

But it is worthwhile. He knows that, with the stubborn, proud certainty that all his people share. Worthwhile, however much the pain and suffering may grow. Worthwhile, to avenge the indignities that Gondor have heaped upon his people – upon  _all_  the people of Harad – since time immemorial. That is the thought that keeps him marching, keeps his pace good and his spirits high, and he knows it is a thought that all of them share.

He is tall, like all of his race – nigh on six foot, and growing still – and, like the rest of them, he shares the deepset gold eyes and dark brown skin of the people of Al-Sina. His long black hair is tied in a warrior's style; thin, neat plaits, woven through with gold threads, fall dark against his scarlet tunic, his brass corslet. In his belt, there is a scimitar, on his shoulder, a bow. He is dressed as a warrior, armed as a warrior, thinks he is a warrior.

He is no warrior. The older soldiers, who march alongside him with their notched blades and their scarred faces, know that much. He is not a warrior; he is a seventeen-year-old boy, still old enough to be proud of the few dark hairs clustered on his chin. And he will die that way, unless he grows up very, very quickly.

But Imial Zahiir thinks he is a warrior. He walks with his head high, the weight of the armour unfamiliar on his shoulders, occasionally grabbing at the bow that is poorly-balanced on one shoulder. And he is not afraid.

At least, he is not afraid until Mahoomed, his cousin, Mahoomed who had been so proud to be riding with the  _mûmakil_ warriors, Mahoomed who had parted ways with him only the day before, with a solemn injunction not to meet again until they had spilt Northern blood – he is not afraid until that Mahoomed suddenly clutches at his throat with a strangled cry that cuts through the air. Until Mahoomed falls from his seat, hangs for a moment seemingly in midair, and then tumbles in a great rush, away from the  _mûmak_ , with an arrow lodged in the shallow hollow of his throat, and lands with a crash on the path beside them.

And  _then_  fear blooms in him, like blood on a clean shirt, and in the tense silence that follows, he finds himself choking back tears of panic and of loss. His bow is in his hands before he's even drawn breath, loaded and tensed to fire, but he cannot see the foe anywhere, anywhere at all. And then there is shouting –  _Northerners! Northerners!_  – and then more shouting, in a tongue he does not recognise –  _To me, men of Gondor, to me!_  – and then arrows are flying, and he sees a white face, surrounded by dark hair, and he shoots.

The shot goes wild, but at the other side of the battlefield, Faramir son of Denethor feels its wind by his face as he ducks, and thanks the Valar that it was not an inch lower. Imial neither notices this nor pays it mind, because the battle is thick around him now, the air dark with arrows. The gold collar around his neck turns aside one such, sending it skittering up into his chin, and he winces; there is blood on his skin now, hot and cloying, and fear chokes him.

"Mahoomed!" he shouts, because he can see his cousin struggling back to his feet, blood bubbling from between his lips, and then there is a Northerner there, tall and ugly and strong, and Imial lunges forwards, throwing his bow aside and pulling the scimitar loose from his belt.  _This_  is his weapon,  _this_  feels a greater comfort to him, and for a moment, he almost believes that he can do it, that he can somehow, impossibly, save the boy he grew up with, save his cousin, his friend.

And then, suddenly, real time and real fear rushes back, and he dives between Mahoomed and the Northerner, tears flying from his eyes and sweat beading on his brow, and brings his blade up to catch the pale man's broadsword as it sweeps down. He sees the cold grey eyes of his enemy, like hard iron, and he knows he will get no mercy here. This is an earnest battle, such as he has never fought before, and he will get no mercy, so he must show none. And in the Northerner's cruel, arrogant features, he sees all the tales he has been told about the persecution of his people, the evils of their people, and hate rises up in him like a storm. It is no longer fear for Mahoomed that drives him; it is pure rage and utter loathing. There is crimson on his blade, and there is crimson wetting his scarlet tunic, and there is crimson hanging in beads in his black hair. He no longer knows what is his blood and what is the Northerner's, but it is the Northerner's guard that drops, not his, and it is the Northerner's head that flies through the air, severed in a swing that he didn't know he had in him.

And then he remembers Mahoomed, and then he turns, only to find that his cousin, swaying on his feet with the arrow still lodged in his throat, has been confronted by another of the hated Northerners, and before he can move a muscle, right before his eyes, another Northern arrow, fletched with those terrible green feathers, strikes Mahoomed in the back of his neck, and the Northerner, not content with such a murder, has driven his blade into Mahoomed's shoulder, and there is blood in Mahoomed's hair, drowning out the gold…

And then Mahoomed, Corba's son, Imial's cousin, Raheli's husband, lurches forwards with a noise that Imial thinks, banally, stupidly, is rather like a goat being slaughtered. His foot catches on the Northerner's, and he trips, falling in a trail of blood from the edge of the bank they stand on.

Imial sees him fall, sees him crash face-down onto the ferns at the bottom with a horrible, meaty thud, thinks he sees movement nearby. And he turns swiftly, shouting " _Ware! Ware!_ " but the words are barely out of his mouth before they come back to him, like an echo but not an echo, at the edge of the group he has strayed from; " _Ware! Ware!_ " and he sees 'Uman, with the dark skin and red war-paint of the Razei, beside him, sees fear in the older man's eyes. And then, the mûmak has broken free from the trap, the cowardly trap, set for them by the Northerners, and it is charging straight at him, down the steep bank, and in front of him, there is 'Uman again, eyes bulging and face grey, shouting again and again " _Ware! Ware!_ " But 'Uman cannot take his own advice, because suddenly there is a spray of blood, and the old Razei clansman who fought once beside Imial's own father, in the long-off distant past when their two races were in alliance, the man who taught Mahoomed to ride the mûmakin the first place, the man who beat Imial soundly for sneaking rations and then gave him spare in atonement, is suddenly skewered on the barbed tusk of the great  _mûmak_ , his broken body tossed aside as the great beast flees blindly. On the creature's neck, the tribesman from jungles Imial has never seen lurches to and fro, clinging on with hands and knees and teeth beside the smashed canopy of the saddle. Only the day before, he had been telling them stories of the thick green canopies of his own land, and now he is going to die, Imial knows he is going to die, and Imial himself barely escapes being crushed under the mûmak's great feet, diving to the side and rolling through the fresh ferns, so bright and green compared to the deserts of his homeland, but somehow less fair, and he hears screaming, and realises it is his own.

" _Ware! Ware!_ " he shouts, again and again, his throat sore now with every rasping breath. " _Ware!_ _Mûmak! Ware!_ "

If they do not hear me, he thinks frantically, they must be deaf, and he shrieks it again, stumbling upright in the deep ferns and fumbling for the handle of his scimitar. " _Ware! WARE!_ " And there is nausea rising in his throat, and there is blood cloying on his face, his and Mahoomed's and 'Uman's, Sinaen and Razei and Northern, and then his hand closes around the hilt of his sword, and he is sprinting up the slope again, screaming now in rage, not fear, and beneath the blood that smears his face, he no longer even looks human. Spit flecking his lips and clinging to the beginnings of a beard on his chin, he throws himself forwards at the Gondorians, but it is too late, it is always too late, and he is tackled to the ground by a swarthy Easterner, who is missing an arm now and has an arrow trapped between two of the plates of his corslet, but who is still very much alive and very much active.

"Let them be, boy!" he grinds out, his bearded face very close to Imial's. The young Sinaen can smell rotten meat on the soldier's breath, hot on his face, and although he speaks the tongue of the desert tribes, it is with the accent of a coastsman. "There's no way out of that now, once you're into it! They're dead meat, and if you go after them, you will be, too! Better to leave the Northern bastards standing, and be there to fight them off later!"

Imial nods, wide-eyed, thinking wildly that he might be as frightened by this stranger – who might very well be Haradrim, but is not from any Haradrim race that the young Sinaen has ever come across – as he is by the prospect of death, as he is by the prospect of the Northerners.

Seeing the terror on the young man's face, the warrior's expression softens a little. It may have been long, long indeed, since his first battle, but he can still remember the horror of it all. As soon as he is sure that the brass-armoured young man will not storm back into battle at the drop of a hat, the older man stands up.

As soon as the weight is lifted off him, Imial rolls over, onto his hands and knees, and vomits. He should be ashamed, he knows, to be such a coward that battle makes him sick, and it will be something that he knows will haunt him for years, but he does it anyway, his throat rising in protest against the smell, the sight, the very  _idea_  of this battle.

And when he is done, he stands up again, sheltered from view by the ferns and by the hill, and wipes his mouth. The coastsman is watching him still, with grim amusement showing on his weathered countenance, and Imial flushes.

"Don't worry about it," the older man advises him gruffly, picking up an abandoned bow – not Imial's, which is no doubt still lying at the crest of the hill where he threw it, but close enough – and passing it to him. "You aren't the first to be caught ill by your first fight."

"It's not my first fight," Imial protests, but weakly and unconvincingly, and the coastsman is not fooled for a minute.

"There's no shame in it," he says, casting about for abandoned arrows. "Be glad that the marauding Northerners have no interest in your deserts, and that your clan have passed a lifespan in peace."

That isn't exactly true, Imial thinks, and remembers with a shudder the wars between the Sinaens and the Mihilae; remembers huddling in a sand-covered tent while the men outside fought to and fro like thunder. But that was a long time ago, when he was still a child and he says nothing but a rather embarassed, "Thank you."

"Don't think it," the coastsman says with a shake of his head, and bows in the fashion of the coast, arms crossed over his chest – and his severed arm makes an effort to cross, although past the elbow there is only a bloody mess, and it does little more than twitch towards the other.

Imial watches, fascinated, and only just remembers to return the bow, hands clasped behind his back in the Sinaen manner.

"Gamba Qayyum," the coastsman says, and it takes Imial a moment to realise that it is an introduction. "From the tribe Yara of the western shores."

"Imial Zahiir." He pauses for a moment, considering the utter banality of the situation, of polite introductions here, now, with drying vomit crusted around his mouth and rivulets of darkening crimson spilling over his face, of manners and etiquette in these strange lands, with the Northerners still prowling around all of a hundred yards away. "From the tribe Al-Sina of the central deserts."

"Well met, friend, and pleasant days," Gamba says, as is the custom, and, as is the custom, Imial replies with, "May they be long to you and short to your foes," although he can't help feeling that, after today, wishing anyone long days is a stretch.

"Indeed," Gamba says with a nod, formalities over, and Imial notices that, although his right arm if destroyed beyond all use, his sword arm is not; from the practiced way he grasps his scimitar, the Yaran has been very lucky to be born left-handed. "Now, if we'd not change those two wishes around, we'd best hurry." He indicates with a nod of his head that Imial should follow him, and then he's away, sword held low and ready, crouching through the poor cover of the ferns and running.

Slinging the bow over his shoulder and checking the quiver at his belt, Imial mimics the Yaran's low, defensive posture, scuttling through the deep green after him. His bright uniform, brass and scarlet and gold, which he was so proud of only an hour or so before, now seems a hideous, garish thing, a beacon for Northern arrows, and he wishes with all his might for duller garb. Every one of his footfalls seems to make as much noise as a herd of mûmakil, and with every passing second, he expects one of those accursed green-flighted arrows to strike him between the shoulders. Gamba seems perfectly serene as he sneaks onwards, and Imial envies him that ease.

The Sinaen has no idea how long they have been running, halfway between road and forest, when the Yaran in front of him stops dead, raising a hand. Stop.

Imial does, breathing heavily, grateful for the respite. He has always been a good runner, but now he finds that running freely over shifting sands is not at all like the quick, sneaky rush of the last few minutes. His breath is coming heavy, and his heart is pounding. To his horror, he can taste fresh vomit in his mouth, and he spits hurriedly onto the earth.

"You'll have to get better at that," Gamba tells him, not unkindly. "With the damned pale soldiers attacking us so often now, it's a skill you can ill do without – and I can hear your breathing from a mile away."

Imial accepts the criticism, as he has been taught, bows his thanks for it, as he has been taught, and is surprised when Gamba cuffs him around the jaw.

"Don't bother with that here, boy. There's few enough who appreciate it, and too much politeness can get a man killed."

"But… back on the slopes…" Imial stammers, his voice stumbling over the twin blocks of breathlessness and confusion.

"I needed you to wait," Gamba said. "And if you make a little noise while a lot is going on already, men don't notice it continue afterwards. Trust me."

And Imial does. He trusts the Yaran implicitly, although they have only just met. Perhaps, he thinks, that is how war is.

How war is…

And then his mind goes back to Mahoomed, choking on his own blood as he fell, and he finds himself crying, in big, childish gulps that thoroughly embarrass him. Again, Gamba simply watches, as he did when the Sinaen was vomiting, and when Imial is done, he claps him lightly on the shoulder.

"That lad who fell first…" he says thoughtfully, and Imial looks up, surprised. "…Friend of yours?"

Imial shakes his head. "Cousin."

Nodding, Gamba sits down next to him, well aware that the Sinaen must be thoroughly humiliated by this show of emotion, and says, "It's always hard when you see someone you know go down. And that was a nasty way for it to happen."

Imial is giving every impression of not listening, but it's obvious that he feels a little better for the reminder that he's not alone. "What do we do now?"

"What do we do?" Gamba sighs, chewing thoughtfully on his thumbnail. "We do as we are told. We bind our wounds and bring our survivors together, and then we do what we were brought here to do."

Imial wipes his eyes, picking at the dried blood on his face. "Mordor?"

"Mordor."


	2. Fighting For Shelter

Mordor.

He's never seen it before, but he knows from the moment he crests the hill and sees it laid out there, in front of him, that it is what his people call  _shal-anyam_ ; dark, mysterious, sly. Evil coils around it like a snake. Like a snake, he also senses immediately, it is not an evil that suffers any order but its own. He remembers the stories; how Morgoth rose and fell, how his lieutenant Sauron rose in his place… This is not a human evil.

But like a snake, too, like the broad, venomous sidewinders that frequent his homeland, it can be turned to use. Young though he is, Imial is well aware that a force such as this cannot be tamed. Nonetheless, there is a part of him, as there is in all the people of Harad, he knows, that thinks that a force so strong, working towards the same aim, can only be an ally.  _The enemy of my enemy is my friend_ , as they say in the North. He thinks this is true, if only because the alternative – that they really are allying themselves with a new conqueror; that they are giving up so many of the sons of the desert – and the jungles and the coasts, he supposes – for a wild dream – is too hideous even to consider.

Behind him, Gamba, who has been just about  _everywhere_ , as far as Imial can tell, and has presumably seen much worse, simply sighs deeply, relieved, and pushes the young man lightly in the small of the back. Imial blinks, not having realised that he has frozen in place, hypnotised almost by the great black gates of Mordor. Looking around, though, he is grateful to notice that he is not the only one staring in rapt horror; of the ragtag band of a hundred or so Haradrim, he sees at least ten or fifteen others just as captivated. All of them are his age, give or take a few years – nobody older would let their mind wander so easily, he chides himself – but at least he is not alone.

And now, looking properly at their little platoon, he notices things that he has never noticed before; the oldest man, the youngest… in the surviving Haradrim, there is barely a common factor. Skins range from that almost as white as the Northerners', to a sort of sallow tan, to the deep, deep black of the Tahali. He sees uniforms in scarlet, in crimson, in white, black, bronze, iron. He sees weapons that range from the scything, bladed flails carried by the Kishuka, to the spears and scimitars of his own people, to a strange set of bladed discuses that the youngest of them – a brown-skinned lad of about twelve or thirteen, who Imial realises with a shiver of mixed revulsion and envy is probably already a more seasoned soldier than he himself – carries in a rack of leather straps over one shoulder. He guesses that there are no less than seventy or eighty tribes represented here, and even to his uneducated eye, there cannot be fewer than ten entirely separate races.

Gamba knows better, of course. In his own mind, he has carefully been taking account of every last man with them – and they are all men here, even the Sinaen, who had been a mewling, pissing whelp before the battle. He knows that the oldest of them is sixty-three and the youngest is eleven. He knows that there are precisely eighty-nine Haradrim there – and unconsciously finds himself using the Northern word, the only word he knows to encompass all the southern lands – and that of those, nineteen first saw battle three days ago, among them the Sinaen he has begun to think of as his boy. He has also been around long enough that the knowledge – picked up quite innocently while setting up camp – that the youngest of them, Ashk, fought  _his_  first battle at the age of seven does not surprise him one bit.

What  _does_  surprise him, though – what surprises both of them, probably all of them – is the sudden realisation that these are all one army.  
Before, when there were hundreds – thousands – of them in the army, it was easy to forget that. The tribes closed into their own close-knit groups, each regarding the others with a sort of semi-benign suspicion.

And now there are eighty-nine of them, and perhaps the closest thing to a clan group is the five or six Mendean archers who cling together as though joined at the hip. Besides that, tribesman after tribesman finds himself standing alone; the lucky few have another of their tribe with them, but only the Mendeans have more than that.

And nobody is fighting. Nobody is killing each other, nobody is bringing up the rapes or the killings or the thefts that have so long sparked warfare across the wide jungles and the wider deserts. Imial stands next to a Mihilman, who for all he knows may have been one of those very warriors who led the charge against Al-Sina those years ago, and neither of them so much as glare at one another.

Because it doesn't  _matter_. They are comrades now, not rivals. And the Mihilman – Nitin, his name is – caught Imial when he would have fallen into one of the ever-present crevices in the earth, and Imial bound Nitin's arm when it became septic.

And now they stand here, staring out at the Black Gate, and although every one of them thinks, in his own way, that the land is  _shal-anyam_ , many of them are thankful for it, too.

"Well, there it is," Gamba says, breaking the spell. Somehow, command has defaulted to him, without any prompting from anyone; there is, though, a sadness about that command, because war is no place for mercy, and all those who have fought before know that he will probably be near-useless in battle. Even left-handed, the loss of an arm will throw his balance until he has given himself the time to get used to it – and time is one thing they do not have. And he will be pushed to Gondor, because they all will be, and he will certainly die there.

"There it is," he repeats now, his teeth flashing white in a bright smile. "Mordor. Home's in sight."

It isn't, of course. Home is far, far away, and they all know it.

But the end of their journey, or at least of this particular stretch, is close. Glancing over at Imial, Gamba sees ill-disguised tears starting to his eyes – and the Sinaen is not the only one biting back tears. Many of the young men, who have dealt death for the first time, are equally emotional. Ashk, of course, has a rather disdainful look on his face; the near-disgust of a precocious youth finding he is better than his elders. Suddenly, Gamba knows that it is why he dislikes the boy so much; he has a sullen arrogance that would be galling enough in anyone, but combined with his complete disrespect for human life in general, he is hateful. His own race, the Yaran thinks moodily, may be merciless warriors and hunters, but Ashk's are cold-blooded murderers.

Besides the youngest of the company, though, the party are comforting the young men in the best way they can, which is to say, ignoring their tears completely. A few of the lads crying glance sidelong at one another, as though to make sure that they are not the only ones making such womanish fools of themselves, but no more than that.

They stand there for a moment, on top of the hill, in silent tribute to the hundreds who fell those few days ago. Then the eldest of the group, a fit-looking Tahali man with coal-black skin and a neat-cropped white beard, claps his hands sharply. "Well, it won't get any closer if all we do's stand and look at it. We're not there yet!"

With a chorus of groans – they are all hungry and thirsty, and most of them are exhausted from the long, ceaseless march – the little band starts forwards again on aching feet. Behind Gamba, Nitin pulls out a mostly-empty water flask, shakes it mournfully for a moment, then takes a gulp from it and passes it back to Imial, who nods his gratitude, but drinks little before passing it on. It is a pattern that is beginning to emerge; the desert folk, most of whom are used to long marches and dry climates, hold back from taking too much water, although they are, on the whole, just as thirsty as the others. It's a matter of pride. Ashk, Gamba is fairly sure, has only drunk once since they regrouped on the old road, and although his lips are dry and cracked, he seems to regard it as an achievement.

All of them, though, are in poor condition, nonetheless. There are several men walking barefoot, mostly from the jungles, and they are, without exception, leaving bloody footprints behind them in this barren, rocky land. The vicious thorns and jagged branches that seem to be the only things that grow here have gashed them all in various measures, and with so many of their packs left behind and no chance to retrieve them, they have been living on rations that, spread properly, would perhaps have lasted ten men for a day, at most. Besides Nitin's omnipresent flask, there are perhaps three other flasks, and a hastily-patched waterskin with a green-fletched arrow still lodged in the cork. Most of the wounds they suffered have been infected by one thing or another, and the remains of Gamba's arm had to be severed the night before, after the old man noticed the stink of gangrene about him.

But they are alive. Every last man who lived through the battle stands here now, each grumbling to his neighbour in whichever tongue best suits them.

And Mordor is in sight,  _shal-anyam_  though it may be.

To Imial, born and raised in the burning deserts, the only think he sees about Mordor is grey. It all looks dull, as though he is looking at a world without colour. The light is cold, the sun is white, the clouds are grey. And Mordor stands at the centre of it all, larger and stronger than anything he has ever seen before. His people are nomads, and he is unused to solid buildings of  _any_  size, but this… this…

As he walks forwards, and the walls begin to tower above him, he finds that his mouth is hanging open. He closes it quickly, and hears Nitin snort with laughter beside him. Looking over at the older man, though, the Sinaen can see just as much awe in his eyes.

"Hypocrite," he mutters, joshing the Mihilman.

"At least I don't think I'm descended from a star," Nitin replies mildly. The slur on the whole tribe of Al-Sina is obvious, but there is still amazement in his voice. "Valar, how do they  _build_  all this?"

"Nobody knows that," the Tahalian says from behind them, scratching at his thick head of silver hair. "Leastaways, not a soul  _I've_  come across."

"Well, it must have been built  _somehow_ …" Imial's voice is a little taut; as with most of them, any good humour is purely to disguise the fact that all he really wants to do is go home and sleep.

"Not necessarily," the Tahalian – and  _damn_ , Imial thinks, he wishes he could remember the  _name_  – says smoothly. There's a certain agelessness to his voice, besides the deeply Southern accent with which he speaks their common tongue. "I mean, is't true what they say of Morgoth? For, if it's so, then here nothing's sure to have been built by human hands – or Orcish hands, neither."

" _Shal-anyam_ …" Imial mutters, looking up at the dull grey sky, the fires of the distant Osgiliath the only light that comes close to the bright skies of home. The Tahalian – Babo, that was his name – looks baffled. Nitin, however, whose own tongue is a dialect of the same language from which the Sinaens' springs, knows what he means. For once, too, he doesn't tease.

He just nods, grimly, and says quietly, in his own tongue, " _Sheul-aneam_ , indeed. But at least it's a resting place."

Imial nods back, fists clenching at his sides. "One small  _shal-anyam_ ," he adds, although this place is not small by any man's terms. "A feeling. Against the whole proved  _shal-anyam_  of the Northerners. I would stand by this place."

"Have you ever seen anything like it, though?" Nitin asks, still clearly awestruck. They are close enough now that the whole horizon is blocked out by the great, towering Black Gates.

"I…" Imial begins, in a voice of similar hushed amazement, but at that point, Gamba turns his head sharply.

"Hush!" he snaps back at them, putting a finger to his lips. "Fuck, we're supposed to be an  _army_ , not a piss-poor band of stragglers." He wrinkles his nose for a moment, and then admits, "Well, I suppose a piss-poor band of stragglers is what we  _are_ , but we could at least try not to act like it, don't you think?"

"And you look like you've never seen a wall before in your lives," Ashk adds from behind them, standing firm with arrogance in his eyes as all four of them – Imial, Gamba, Nitin and Babo – turn to glare at him.

"And I suppose you've seen all there is to see and been everywhere there is to go, have you?" Imial says hotly. "Arrogant, bloody-minded little…"

"Enough of that!" Gamba says sharply, cuffing the Sinaen around the back of the head. He may be one arm short, but the remaining one has more strength in it than in the whole of Imial's body. "Scrapping's for those without appointments to keep!"

Nodding sullenly as he regains his balance, head spinning from the force of the blow, Imial turns back towards the gates, pointedly ignoring the boy behind him, and keeps walking. Beside him, Nitin spins on his heel in total silence, Babo dropping back silently into the ranks – and they  _are_  ranks now; something in Gamba's tone seems to be turning their ragtag little party into a platoon, if not an army – and marches along behind the Yaran, his face like thunder.

As they draw close to the Black Gates, voices begin to reach them; Orcish voices, the words running into each other, until only the sound remains, sound with no meaning. It halts in a low mutter of the Mordor tongue, though, as the sentries notice the little band of Haradrim, and then a voice shouts out in a heavily-accented version of the Harad tongue, "Name and business! We ain't letting a flea-ridden little gang like you in without 'em!"

"Garn, ain't letting 'em in noways, if they're who I think they are!" shouts another voice, deeper than the first. A large orc, leaning idolently on his spear, joins the first bow-legged little creature at the rail of the watchtower. Spitting, he glares at Gamba, who simply raises his chin and says nothing. The orc spits again, with rather better aim; a slightly greenish gobbet of saliva splashes on Imial's shoulder, and he has to restrain his nausea. "Yer a day late, if you're who I thinks you are! Where's the rest of you, then? Got scared and ran off home?"

"We ran into a spot of trouble with some Northerners," Gamba replies calmly. To most of the men behind him, though, it sounds like gibberish; Imial realises with a start that the Yaran is speaking the Northern Common Tongue, which fell into disuse in Harad long ago. "One of the mûmakil broke loose. Ran wild. It was bad enough before – they took us by surprise – but you must know that when a mûmak panics, it's not choosy about who it kills. I don't know what happened to the other mûmakil, but all the other men of our army I have seen have been corpses. If that suits you?" he adds almost snidely, although his tone remains entirely level.

"Suits us? Pah!" The first orc spits now – it seems to be almost a nervous tic with these folk, Gamba thinks with grim amusement – and glances at the second, larger one. "Suits us, he says, Shanik! Turns up with nuffin' we ain't got 'ere already, no mûmakil, no nuffin', and expects us to let 'em all in! What's it to us, some little boys outta the big desert? Take 'im, there." He points to Ashk, standing very still and firm and glaring up at them. "I'd bet his voice ain't even broke yet. Bet you still piss yerself without yer mam to 'elp! How old are you?"

"Eleven," Ashk says immediately, with admirable calm and worrying emotionlessness, and steps forward slightly. "Ashk Naze. From the tribe Ania of the southern forests. I would wish long days to you and short to your foes, but the first I do not wish and the second is certain while your foes are ours." With the shallow nod of the head and blow of the fist to the chest that count for a bow among his people, he steps sharply back into line, his hands dropping to the discuses at his sides.

The orcs stare for a moment, then burst into what might very well be laughter.

"Garn, Ashk Naze, but you ain't half a piece of work, are you?" the one called Shanik says, when he has calmed down enough.

"That is what we bring you," Gamba says. He has to repeat it twice before the orcs hear him properly. "This is what we bring you! Not mûmakil and not the thousand spears we promised, but there's ninety here who've proved themselves time and again." Ignoring their comments, he raises his voice slightly and says, still perfectly calmly, "Better ninety than none, so let us in."

Shanik, who seems to be the leader of the two, makes a face and clips the smaller orc around the ear. "Let 'em in, you brain-rotted idiot!"

"Who're you callin' a brain-rotted idiot?"

"Just let 'em in, piss-for-brains!"

Grumbling under his breath, the bow-legged little orc shuffles out of sight. Imial exchanges a glance with Nitin, neither of them having understood most of the preceding conversation, and both not entirely sure whether they have won this particular battle.

That question is answered for them, though, when with a great, pondorous groan, the massive gates begin to swing open. Automatically, every one of them looks to Gamba, who seems to know precisely what he is doing.

He waits patiently, not looking back at them, until the gates are halfway open, affording a good view of the walled land. Then, back still ramrod-straight, with his head held high and his remaining arm swinging loosely at his side, he steps forwards, unhurriedly. The rest of the party follow him, as one; some prop up injured comrades, as they have been doing for mile upon mile, and others have to limp rather than striding, but every eye is forwards, and every mouth is set in a cold, hard line.

They are well past the gate, and into a great, empty space where the ground has been worn to smoothness by passing feet, when Gamba relaxes slightly and turns to face them. "Thank you, Ashk," he says, quietly. "You handle yourself very well."

Ashk just nods, face expressionless. "I  _am_  a soldier," he says calmly.

Imial, however, is not listening any more. Brushing the thick globule of the orc's spit off his shoulder and neck, he wipes it on his leg and looks around the massive courtyard. The hairs on the back of his neck are rising, and he can only think one thing.

 _Shal-anyam._  Nothing in the whole world, not even in the hated North, could possibly be so very  _shal-anyam_.


	3. Fighting For Family

"Seven!" The roar fills the cramped barracks, a mixture of triumph and resigned disappointment. There is no money to bet, but they bet anyway; a strange mixture of odds and ends changes hands, amid raised voices and arguments.

In the middle of the rough circle of spectators, Gamba raises his hand modestly, smiling. "A skill, a skill. Give me a number."

"Nine!" is the first to be called, then numbers are shouted from here and there and everywhere, the mounting excitement palpable.

"Nine it is," Gamba says mildly, when the tumult has calmed slightly. "Bets?"

Dead silence. Most of the soldiers ranged around him have already lost money, and are unwilling to lose more. In ten rounds, after all, he has never failed to throw the number given.

"I'll bet you my blades that I can throw a higher number than you." Ashk pushes through the suddenly silent crowd, his weapons, as ever, strapped across his narrow back, and sits down cross-legged opposite the Yaran.

"Never bet more than you can afford to lose, lad," Gamba cautions him. "I won't take that bet."

"Are you scared?" Ashk demands, narrowing his eyes.

"Only for you." There is a smile there, clear on the scarred brown face. "Don't push it. You may be a good soldier, but dice rely on chance."

"They don't for you," the boy snaps, snatching up the dice, "and they won't for me. My blades against yours, Yaran."

At the back of the press of soldiers, Imial finally gives up trying to see, and turns, wandering off. They have been in Mordor for three days now, and with the sudden supply of food – even in quantities that would seem scarce in peacetime – the whole group is growing fitter and healthier by the day. He still limps from the blisters of the long march, but they are healing, slowly and surely, and the stink of infection is gone from the small, scrupulously tidy room they all share.

"There's a new platoon coming in soon," a voice says from behind him, and he knows without turning, from the accent, that it is Nitin. "And we'll be leaving as soon as they arrive, for the North."

Imial nods, sitting down on the rough stone stairs and looking back at his friend. "We must hope for their sakes that they did not have an encounter with the pale ghosts, as we did. It will be hard enough for them, not being able to rest betweentimes." He does not even think to doubt what the older man says; over the last few days, Nitin has more than proved himself as a reliable informant.

"They bring mûmakil," Nitin goes on, lowering himself down next to the young Sinaen and pulling out his curved sword. As he rummages through his clothes for his whetstone, he looks over at Imial. "Mûmakil and men. Three thousand at least – the last of the army."

"And then we fight?" Imial asks, knowing the answer, as the Mihilman begins to run the whetstone along the edge of his blade.

Nitin nods. "And then we fight."

They sit in companionable silence for a moment, as Nitin sharpens his blade slowly and Imial pulls out an arrow and begins refletching it. Then, as he cuts the last feather to shape, the Sinaen looks up at his friend.

"Do you have family?" he asks curiously, replacing the arrow in his quiver. "Back home? A wife, children?"

The Mihilman thinks for a moment, looking wistful, then shrugs and goes back to his blade. "Engaged," he answers, with a smile. "Elina, her name is. She's beautiful – ten years my senior, and married once already, but beautiful." He laughs quietly, putting the whetstone aside and turning his attention to Imial again. "Before I left, she told me that she wants twenty Northerners for a dowry, or the wedding's off. I asked her if she wanted them living or dead, and she said she didn't care, but she has a thing for golden-haired men. I told her I should bleach it!" He laughs again, plucking at his shoulder-length black hair. His face is so comical that Imial finds himself laughing, too, and the release of it is immediate and striking.

"What about you?" Nitin asks, when they have stopped laughing. "Some raven-eyed beauty pining for you back in the land of the ever-star?" He bats his eyelashes, grinning. "Some Princess Mende locked away in your heart?"

"Princess Mende?" Imial asks, momentarily distracted. Nitin flaps a hand.

"Just an old story. So, do you?"

Imial laughs, the tips of his ears reddening. "No! Not yet, anyway. There's just me, my brothers, my sister Aaqila, and my mother and father."

"And your Uncle Corba, who you love as a brother," says a deep, laughing voice behind Imial, who jumps.

"Uncle!" He leaps to his feet, arrows forgotten, and almost leaps to embrace the huge bear of a man who stands behind him, before remembering that he is a soldier, and not a child. Checking himself, he clasps his hands behind his back and bows deeply. When he looks up, his eyes are sparkling. "Why didn't you tell me you were here?"

Then he remembers, and there is a more pressing issue at hand. "Uncle," he says slowly, lowering his eyes, "Mahoomed..."

"I know," his uncle cuts in, smile fading, before Imial can go on. "I heard. None of us were ever given a guarantee that we would return alive." But there are tears nestling in the deep lines at the corner of his golden eyes, and under his thick black beard, his mouth is set into a painfully tight line.

Standing up, Nitin silently takes his leave, slipping back up the stairs towards the distant roar of Ashk's temper. The instant the Mihilman is gone, Corba steps forwards and pulls his nephew into a tight hug, biting his lip hard. For a moment, shocked, Imial can do nothing but blink. Then, his lips trembling, he puts his arms around the great bear of a man.

"Raheli and Najiyya will not know until we return," Corba tells him sadly, and Imial can hear the tremble in his voice. "If we return at all." He looks down at Imial, sighing. "Alatar and Pollando drew far back from this conflict. Maybe we should do the same."

"Don't say things like that, uncle!" Imial steps back, fire blazing in his eyes. "The Blue Wizards are Northerners themselves, you know that! Why should we trust them to guide our path against the North? We will fight, and we will win. How can we not? We are united now."

"Now, and maybe never again," Corba murmurs, with a sigh. "But you are right, of course. After all these years of warring, oppression, treachery, we can at last defeat the Northerners. We will make them pay for the way they have treated the South all these years. We will make them pay for Mahoomed's death."

Imial smiles up at his uncle, and it is a man's smile; a warrior's smile. It speaks of blood.

"Yes," he agrees, baring his teeth. "We will make them pay."

"Demons of Azgaroth!" Nitin's voice cries from upstairs, and there is a crash as something heavy hits the wall. "Ashk Naze, you damned Ania bastard!"

Imial and Corba exchange glances. Then, suddenly and without warning, they both dissolve into laughter.


	4. Fighting for Honour

The laughter has faded. Cirith Ungol stands empty. The only sound that Imial hears now is the  _tramp, tramp, tramp_  of a hundred thousand feet. The column stretches away in front of him and behind him, red and gold and yellow and black, filling the wide road as they march out of the Black Gates.

There is majesty there, he thinks. There is honour. But there are no smiles now.

This is a man's place. Not a boy's. He can never go back to how things were, he thinks dizzyingly, adjusting his bow on his shoulder. Not now. He had thought that the first army he had travelled with was vast; this one is ten times the size at least, of Haradrim alone. A few orcs – and he is still revolted by them, even now – slink between the Haradrim ranks, their small, dark eyes glaring, but the vast majority of the forces lie ahead of, or behind, the long, glittering column of Southern warriors.

By unspoken agreement, their little band has stuck together. Nitin marches beside him, spear in hand; behind him, the five Mendean archers stride along in step with one another, a perfect row. Babo flanks him on the other side, shield and spear both lashed across his broad back, but a wicked-looking hooked blade clasped in his gnarled hand. In front of him, Yasha, a Kishuka man with by far the palest skin of their company, travels with his heavy flails hooked in his belt and his hands swinging free by his sides.

Even Ashk, for all his petulance and temper, has elected to stay with this company that has become its own tribe. All of them have. They could no more deny this group than they could deny their own tribes at home, and it is a welcome closeness on a journey as strange as this.

Gamba is the only one talking; in the stilted, harsh sounds of the Northern Common Tongue, he is discussing something in hushed tones with the bandy-legged orc who met them at the Gates when they first arrived. Imial strains to hear, but with his knowledge of the Northerners' tongue rudimentary at best, he can only make out odd words. It doesn't take long before he gives up, concentrating instead on keeping his head high, his shoulders back, and his step proud. He is an honourable man, after all. He should show it.

The Nazgûl circle overhead, dark shapes in the grey, colourless skies, as they draw closer and closer to the Black Gates. Out of Mordor, he thinks, and finds to his surprise that the idea is a pleasant one. Out into the North, where the stories he has heard are of grass and trees growing as thick and verdant as those in the southern forests. A far cry from these grey walls and grey stone; in the North, he imagines, there is colour again. It will not be the golds and reds of the desert, of course, but his eyes cry for true colour. He finds himself longing for this march to be over, purely so that he can see these wonders, wasted and left to rot by the bloated Northmen who live among them. Longing to find out if the tales of fantastic beasts and strange plants that he has heard are true.

It will be a long way, of course. He knows that. They all know that. That distance, and the stretch of barren desert which the Northerners are not hardy enough to cross, are the barrier between the Haradrim and oblivion; between the Haradrim and invasion. As it stands, the Northerners must come by boat, or pass through Rhûn – as it stands, the Haradrim are as safe as they can be.

As it stands.

He thinks to himself, it will remain so. If we die, then Harad falls, but if we live, then Harad and the deserts will remain. Strong. Unified. Forever.

Gamba's thoughts are similar, as he turns away from the orc, conversation finished. Similar, but with one important difference; the Yaran knows that this war is not one that will be won. If we die, he thinks, touching the bandaged stump of his arm thoughtfully, then Harad may fall without its men. But if we live – is that better?

If they live, then what will happen once the Northerners know themselves to be defeated? Mordor will not stand by its allies forever, he knows that. Before long, if they win, the Eye will turn on Harad, weak, divided, and Gamba would not like to be there when that happens.

But he will fight, anyway. It is in his nature. His honour. And even with that knowledge that there can be no final victory, there is a glint of hope in his heart.

It is none of those which drives him to fight, though. It is the same flame which burns in every heart, from here to the furthest reaches of the Kishuka coasts; a flame which has burnt for centuries. It is the burning desire for _vengeance_.

The tales have been passed down for generations beyond counting; a cruel empire of Northmen, who would take and take and take, and never give back. A people grown fat on the wealth gifted them by the Valar, while the people of the deserts would thirst and fast for days on end, while the coast-dwellers lived in fear of the ever-present ships, and the forest tribes drew back deep into the shadows of their trees. A people who spoke with the tongues of snakes, words as slippery and false as any spoken by the Dark Lord. Tales of hostages taken by the cruel, proud Northerners, children barely out of their mothers' arms, slain for some small infraction they could not understand. And above it all, tales of a servitude that could not be broken; of the slow, creeping loss of all that made the Haradrim what they were.

There was a time, as the children of Harad have always been taught, when this servitude became too much, and the Valar took pity on their Southern followers. They sent a great plague upon the men of the North, and divided the house of Gondor against itself. The Haradrim rose up then, and every man who now marches can remember the words, in whatever language they were spoken;  _a great storm of honourable men, from a thousand thousand nations, marched upon Umbar, and the clash of spear and shield was like thunder. The gold of their braids and the steel of their swords dazzled the Sun away, and the skin of the Northerners turned, from fright, as pale as it is today. They fled, cowardly and weak, and the South followed. The blood of the cruel kings ran in rivers, and so the men of the South regained their honour_.

That is why they march.

They need no more reason.

Harad is fractured, broken, and weak. It has lost its honour.

It is their duty to reclaim it.

And now, those words sing in every mind;  _the gold of their braids, the steel of their swords..._

The sun is watery and pale in Mordor, when it is there at all, but it seems to brighten tenfold when it strikes the polished brass and gold of the Haradrim war-dress. And with every step they take, as half a million feet strike the ground at once, they raise a sound like thunder.

The mûmakil step heavy behind the column of Southerners, but still ahead of the men of Rhûn, who fall back to maintain the gap. Nobody, orc or Man, Easterling or Haradrim, wants to be caught near the mûmakil if they are panicked; least of all, Gamba's company, who have all seen first-hand the damage an angry mûmak can do.

But they march on, nonetheless. They rest little; they talk less. Barely a word is exchanged between the men as they march, besides orders and muttered complaints.

They have been walking for a week at least, and Imial is exhausted, when he finally voices his own doubts. He and Nitin are sitting, cross-legged, by the campfire. The night is alien; the stars are strange. He recognises Al-Sina, though, even here; it lies brighter than ever in the far West, and it reminds him bitingly of home.

"Where is the honour in this?" he asks Nitin, who is gnawing on a piece of black bread. The Mihilman shrugs maddeningly, and passes him a chunk of dried meat – Imial doesn't want to think what sort of meat it is.

He takes it anyway, wolfing it down, because he is hungry. But the question still hovers in the front of his mind.

Where is the honour in this? In defeating a nation that has not bothered with Harad for generations? Where is the honour in this long, dirty march, where the crack of whips rings out loudly every second of the day, and they know nothing any longer but to put one foot in front of the other; to go on walking for what seems like forever? The polished armour has been dulled by the dust of the road; the thunder of footsteps has died to a shuffle.

Where is the honour in this?

The next day, they are storming down the hills into lands greener and more verdant than anything the Sinaen boy has ever seen, with no time to gape at its wonders. They are diving in a great thunder towards where the Northerners cower in a city that has locked out the daylight, and the blaze of their swords and shields outdoes the sun.

And he thinks, wonderously, fearfully,  _there it is._


End file.
